Who are the world’s greatest living narrative filmmakers, what I call the Magnificent Seven? Several Film Cultures ago, I offered my elite — Ingmar Bergman, Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean-Luc Godard, Robert Altman, Werner Herzog, Roman Polanski, Claude Chabrol — and challenged readers to come up with alternatives. Well, e-mails poured in from as far as C.W. Post College on Long Island and as wide as Stoughton. I did attract a mix of amateur cinema fans and media professionals: curators, filmmakers, professors. Some 60 more filmmakers were nominated.

The biggest surprise? Not a single vote for Steven Spielberg, Spike Lee, or Ang Lee. Nada for Pedro Almodóvar or any Spanish-language filmmaker. Or any African, Italian, or Russian one. Jane Campion was the only woman filmmaker to get more than one vote. The other female directors who made ballots: Chantal Akerman, Elaine May, Claire Denis.

What, according to readers, were my biggest errors? Actually, no one complained about who I put on, only who I excluded. Six emails pointed me to Martin Scorsese. “Listing Scorsese comes off as a bit of a cliché, especially for a first-year film student,” wrote Christopher Godburn, 19, “but the fact of the matter is he makes great films.” Four votes went to Woody Allen, and, the most for non-American directors, three each to Mike Leigh and Wong Kar-wai. Of the latter, Harvard film-conservationist Julie Buck wrote, “His visuals are to be swooned over. His candy colors, the performances he pulls out of actors — Wong Kar-wai is simply brilliant.”

Other winners:

Stanley Donen. “The musical may be dead or at least moribund, but the man who had a hand in Singin’ in the Rain, On the Town, and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers should get consideration,” says Randy Steinberg, film teacher.

Clint Eastwood. “What makes a great director? To paraphrase Howard Hawks: two or three great movies, and no bad movies. Clint definitely qualifies here,” claims Richard Partridge, film fan

Hou Hsiao-Hsien. “With a single image, he can give you the difference between city and country, past and present, while keeping a subtle character and story development in motion.” That’s the opinion of Mike Bowes, president of the Brattle Theatre’s board of directors.

Patrice Leconte. “In the category of making fabulously enjoyable films, my vote goes to the versatile Leconte. No other director — living or dead — do I so consistently admire and love,” chimes in Bruce Kingsley, Web film critic.

Atom Egoyan. “My favorite director! His films are cerebral explorations of identity, voyeurism, which become ever more layered and accomplished.” This vote comes from Michael Colford, president of the Chlotrudis Awards.

The future of an illusion When I first realized that movies would, for better or worse, dominate my imagination forever, I really gave no thought to the forces at work creating these transfiguring images on a screen.

Observe and distort Great filmmaker though he is, Martin Scorsese isn't the first name that comes to mind when you think about comedy genius. But Jody Hill, traces his inspiration in part back to his first viewing of Taxi Driver .

Gore a bore? I was off to Silver Spring, Maryland, and the Fourth Silverdocs Documentary Festival earlier this month.

World without end By the time it got to the anthropomorphic bunnies acting out a sit-com to a laugh track (or are they donkeys? subscribe to www.davidlynch.com to learn more), I knew that Inland Empire was David Lynch at his most seductive and a film I’d be thinking about for a lot more than the rest of the afternoon. Watch the trailer for Inland Empire (YouTube) Say ‘cheese’: Milking Laura Dern’s performance. By Peter Keough

Interview: Kathryn Bigelow Although everyone makes a point of Kathryn Bigelow's gender and height and good looks, what's germane is that even if she were short and had bushy eyebrows like Martin Scorsese, she still would be directing action pictures like no one since Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone .

Fall back If you cannot remember the past, so Santayana said, you’re condemned to repeat it. Watch trailers for this fall's new releases.

Off with their heads The signs are getting bleak for the man in the White House and the party in power.

Whitey wash One of the first questions at a Manhattan press conference for Martin Scorsese’s Boston-set mob thriller is addressed to “Matt and Ben.” Fateful Departed: Scorsese haunts the mean streets of Beantown. By Peter Keough

REVIEW: LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE | March 12, 2013 A decent little movie, but hardly a major one, from Iran's master filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, who, self-exiled, here shoots in Tokyo with an all-Japanese cast.

REVIEW: THE GATEKEEPERS | February 26, 2013 Great cinema journalism, The Gatekeepers was the National Society of Film Critics' winner for Best Documentary of 2012.

REVIEW: THE LITTLE FUGITIVE (1953) | February 27, 2013 It's the 60th anniversary of this pioneering American independent feature, which greatly influenced both cinema vérité documentarians and the French New Wave.

REVIEW: HOW TO RE-ESTABLISH A VODKA EMPIRE | February 20, 2013 Daniel Edelstyn launched this film project after reading the spirited diary of his late grandmother, Maroussia Zorokovich, whose wealthy Jewish family split from Ukraine as the Bolsheviks were taking control.

REVIEW: HAPPY PEOPLE: A YEAR IN THE TAIGA | February 12, 2013 What Robert Flaherty did with title cards in his silent Nanook of the North , Werner Herzog manages with declamatory voiceover in Happy People : romanticization of the austere, self-reliant lives of hunters and trappers in the icebound north.